My friend & fellow poet Daniel Laxer wrote me and Aimee Davidson to say,
I was just skimming your respective blogs, and I couldn't help but wonder, do you not worry that the work you put up on your blogs will get stolen? I mean, there's some good stuff there. And I'd thought about putting my poems up on the net. But I don't want to see them published elsewhere under someone else's name. Doesn't that thought worry you?
My reply:
Hi Dan,
The complete poems I post on my blog (on Sky of Ink, Jonah) have already been published elsewhere. Of course, these poems can now be easily lifted and/or altered in some way and republished under someone else's name, but the same thing could also be done to poems published in any of a number of online journals... so they are about as protected as that.
I don't put unpublished poems on my blog, but only a little due to the concern you mention. The main reason is that once they're on the blog they're eminently Googlable, and any review considering publishing one of them could simply type in a few words from the poem, and quickly find it. Most literary reviews, for all their limited readership & distribution, want to be THE FIRST IN THE UNIVERSE to publish any given poem. Since I still seek the validation of being published by said reviews, I figure it's better to be safe than sorry.
At the same time I sometimes wonder about my self-imposed gag order. Especially when tempted to put up a recent poem, talk about the writing of it, etc. How many readers, after all, does my blog get? (From what I see, the hit total is impressive, but the readership, a worthy few...) Does printing here constitute publishing? Do harried review editors even have the time to BOTHER googling to find a poem in a blog? All open questions. I see people like Aimee putting drafts of poems for feedback and the immediate pleasure of reaching out to someone out there in the cosmos, and I can't help feeling, what the hell? Why not?
Someday, who knows, I may change my tack.
Poetry in this culture remains an exercise in obscurity. It will never generate the glitz or $$$ that make copyright infringement sexy. That obscurity, I'd say, is its greatest protection.
3 comments:
Aimee Davison replied to me by email,
Hey Mr. Poets,
I just wrote this to Marg:
"I am a bit of a hypocrite because I reposted some of my poems and then
yanked them again out of a fit of artistic paranoia, partially due to a cautionary e-mail from Daniel. What if Avril Lavine uses MY words? What if my brilliance is squandered on the infamy of others? Lol. I sometimes wish that the fear of copyright was less prevalent in poet's minds. Perhaps because we work so hard to get our pithy poems out there that if someone should yank the words from our posession/ artistic control, it would feel
like the ultimate personal insult... but I will half-share (post and
remove), for now, kind of like an exhibitionist flashing and then hiding the goods away. :) "
I guess my advice to you, Dan, is to share what you want, but keep the
really good stuff hidden until published, like Brian...
Oh I don't know.
What a dilemma!
A.
I'm not a lawyer so this is not legal, but I do have some experience with this topic. Copyright (not copywrite as it's spelled in this post) is the right you have an author to control reproduction and distribution of your work.
According to Writer's Digest, since March 1989, copyright notices are no longer required to secure protection. However, if you are concerned about protecting your work beyond the date stamp on your blog (which, in effect, is publishing it's first electronic rights) and not willing to pay $30 per poem to register it with the U.S. Copyright office, mail a bunch of them to yourself and keep the envelope sealed. It's the easiest and most cost effective way to prove when you originated the work if you ever had cause.
legal *advice*, of course. :)
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